Thanks for posting those, BF.
I remember hearing the Pips' version of I Heard It Through The Grapevine in 1967 but I didn't think too much of it. 1968 was a tumultuous year with the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, the ensuing race riots and the escalation of the war in Viet Nam. Those opening bars of Marvin Gaye's version of I Heard It Through The Grapevine just sounded so pounding and sinister when I first heard it. It still gives me chills when I hear it today.